


Pretty Dead City

by waxjism



Category: NSYNC
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-10-30
Updated: 2001-10-29
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:24:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 19,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waxjism/pseuds/waxjism





	1. we could be dead

When he forgot himself and said, "What if we never get out of here?" and JC decked him, Chris knew that he really was in hell and that he deserved it.

He curled up on the cold, dusty sidewalk and held his hands over his bleeding nose, expecting a kick in the stomach.

When nothing happened, he looked up. Joey was trying to hug JC, but JC was backing off, batting at his hands. He wasn't even trying to wipe the tears off his face. Chris had never seen JC cry this shamelessly before, crying like a child without hiding his face. He didn't look angry anymore.

Justin and Lance were still standing in the shadow of the doorway, frozen and confused.

Chris made a painful movement to uncurl his body from its tight, panicky fetal position. Justin came to life and rushed to his side. Chris welcomed his hands and his concern and thought about himself again and not about JC's pale, furious face and the fist coming out of nowhere.

"He doesn't hate you," Justin mumbled, "I think."

"Do you?" Chris asked. Justin handed him a crumpled paper tissue and didn't answer.

*

They started walking again. Chris stayed a bit behind. He wanted to ask them what the hell they thought they were doing here. Where the hell they thought they were going, but he didn't think that would go over well, so he walked and breathed the dead air and stared at the cracks in the pavement. Sometimes he caught things moving from the corners of his eyes, but when he turned to look, the buildings were blind and deaf and mute and everything was so quiet. His footsteps sounded dull, and at one point, when he'd stopped to look over his shoulder, the sounds of the others faded, too quickly, too completely, and he looked ahead and saw that they were almost half a block away. He ran to catch up and it felt like running a marathon; when he reached them he was out of breath and his legs felt weak and shivery.

"What the hell are you doing?" Lance asked, irritably. Chris sucked in breath after painful breath and said,

"There's something fucked up with this place."

Lance looked at him in disgust and shook his head.

*

The light never changed. He couldn't tell how long they'd been walking. His shadow was a blurry spot of not-quite-darkness right underneath him, just like it was when he first opened his eyes and pulled in the first breath of still air and thought, predictably, I guess we're not in Kansas anymore. He'd looked around and met Justin's eyes and seen Justin mouth Dorothy back at him.

He'd been so relieved to have them all there, then. They'd hugged and said things like, "Thank God you're here. What happened?" and "At least I'm not alone."

Now they'd stopped touching and they all walked with gaping empty space between each other.

*

Joey fell and didn't get up again. They circled him and no one did anything. He was gasping like a fish on dry land and his eyes were rolling up, showing nothing but the whites. Finally, Lance knelt and touched his face carefully.

"Joey?" he said, and his voice was a dry whisper in the dead air.

Joey panted helplessly and reached up and grabbed Lance's hand, so hard that Chris could see his knuckles whitening. "Fuck," he whispered, "Fuck, I can't breathe--"

"Please," Lance whispered and Joey held his hand and tried to breathe, and the rest of them stood quietly around them. Chris caught JC staring at him, staring violently, with his hands curled into fists by his sides.

"I'm better," Joey said after a while. "Fuck, that was some scary shit. It was like the air was too thin or something. Felt like I was dying. I didn't think I was in this lousy shape."

"I don't think you are," Lance said. Chris wanted to yell at them, "can't you SEE what it's doing? Can't you see this place is dead?" but it wouldn't accomplish anything, and he thought maybe they already did see.

"Maybe we should rest," JC said. No one argued.

*

Chris awoke with a start and realised that someone was screaming, had been for a while. It sounded like it was coming from far off in the distance, but when he looked around, he saw that it was Justin, and Justin was right beside him, maybe two feet away. He was screaming like he was dying, but the sound was scratchy and muted.

When Chris touched him, he jerked upright and shut up immediately, like someone clapped a hand over his mouth. His eyes were wide, showing too much white. He was shivering.

"Nightmare?" Chris asked.

"Nightmare," Justin said. "Holy fuck. Holy fuck." He rubbed both his hands over his face.

They sat quietly for a while. Chris looked up, and the sky looked exactly the same as it had ever since they got here. He couldn't tell where the sun was. If it was there in the first place. It was cold, but not freezing. There was no wind. The buildings rose silent and stern towards the hazy grey above. Vaguely familiar buildings. Vaguely familiar streets. They were huddled under the awning of a restaurant called Vito's. It was a pizzeria. Chris could see the merry green, white and red interior through the window.

"What do you think happened?" Justin asked suddenly. He was sitting with his back against the wall now, his feet pulled up and his arms on his knees.

"I don't know," Chris said, but he was lying, he thought. He had felt...something. He felt it pass through him, and he knew it was his fault somehow. He did it. But there was no point rubbing that in, making Justin hate him more. Maybe he was full of shit, anyway. Maybe it was all just a big, cosmic accident. It probably was. Way to overestimate your own importance, Kirkpatrick.

"It felt like...I don't know. It sounds stupid," Justin said. "Like we were sucked into a parallel universe. How dumb is that?"

"Well, look around," Chris said.

"You did something."

"I don't know," Chris said warily.

"No, like, you did something," Justin said stubbornly. "Maybe you could...do it again?" He looked tired and beaten and, yet, just a little hopeful, like he was putting his last money on Chris. Chris felt like the biggest jerk in the universe. Of course, given that they seemed to be the only inhabitants of this particular universe, he probably was.

"Maybe," Chris said, because he couldn't bear to stub out the hope. "Maybe I can figure it out."

Justin crawled closer and leaned his head against Chris' shoulder. "It could be worse," he said.

Chris had to laugh. It sounded more like a cough, but he pretended it was a real laugh. "How could it be worse?" he asked. Justin was the only warm thing in this world; real human warmth, and Chris wondered why they were all so far away from each other. JC lay curled up next to the wall, as if he wanted to melt into it. Joey leaned against the steps like he'd just passed out. He'd hurt in the...well, morning, for lack of a better word, but there was really no way of telling what time of day it was. Lance had found an old newspaper and pulled it over his head. He looked like a hobo. Chris supposed that's what they were now. Homeless and hopeless and lost. He looked out at the street again. They'd been on this street before. It had been sunny and beautiful, and the wind had kissed his face and there had been pretty girls to look at and cool bikes to circle and hmmm at with Justin.

"We could be dead," Justin said and Chris wrapped his arms around him and pressed his face against the side of his neck. Justin let him.


	2. don't you dare

_Dream: he's back in New Orleans and the little shop (little shop of horrors), and the dusty old proprietor is handing him a dusty old book, but this time he sees more than he actually did then: like how the book is bound in human skin (dead babies) and the dusty old proprietor is really the dead dusty old proprietor and his teeth are sharpened pegs and his skin is covered in twisting, moving, living tattoos. _

"Wait," Chris says. "This wasn't here before."

"You're dreaming, idiot," JC says behind him.

*

Chris gasped and shook himself out of the dream. He tried to turn over and froze. Cold pavement under his back, pale light in his eyes, Justin pressed against his side, Justin's arm thrown casually over his side.

JC was standing a few yards down the street, looking small and skinny and far away. Chris rolled out from under Justin's heavy arm and got up.

He stood next to JC. He couldn't quite believe it himself, but he was afraid to speak. He'd never been afraid of JC before. Not in his life. JC was the sweetest guy on the planet. He couldn't hold a grudge if you stapled it to him.

This place was fucked up in some deep, fundamental way, and this only went to show.

"I can see things moving," JC said softly and Chris took two startled steps backward.

JC turned to him. He just looked tired, not angry.

"There are moving shadows here. You can see them if you just... It's like those things that become pictures if you squint at them in the right way."

Chris didn't tell him that he'd never been able to see those damn things. He tried squinting down the street. Nothing.

"They're people," JC said.

Chris squinted some more. The street was empty and the air was just as still as before.

"I think they're dead," JC said.

"Jesus. Morbid much?" Chris said. He wanted to raise his voice and tell JC to stop fucking with his head, but then he remembered why they were stuck here - how they got here - and he swallowed his irritability. He even closed his eyes and counted to ten.

When he opened them, he saw the pale grey shadow of a fat, bearded man walk right past him. He blinked, and the man was gone.

He shivered and JC looked at him with his tired eyes. "Don't," Chris said. "Don't you dare say you see dead people."

He saw it: JC forgetting for the fraction of a second and smiling. Chris wanted to hug him. Instead he flashed a quick grin and went back to sit on the ground by the wall. Justin moved in his sleep and Chris saw his eyes roll under his eyelids.

*

"You know something?" Lance said a while later, when they were all awake and sitting in a disheartened row on the curb.

"What?" Justin said with no great show of enthusiasm. He was fiddling with a hole in his jeans, poke, poke, poke, and Chris was irritated even though he was tapping his foot restlessly himself.

"I'm not hungry," Lance said, and Joey said,

"Oh yeah, me neither--" just as JC said,

"I haven't been hungry at all for like--" and Justin said,

"Wow. I've never been less hungry."

Chris was quiet. He wasn't hungry, either. He thought about pizza and lasagne and his grandmother's chicken pie, and even that didn't make him hungry. He figured he could walk by a three-star buffet and not feel moved to eat a single crumb.

"That's kinda weird," Lance said and Chris wanted to smack him for stating the obvious, but Lance looked pinched and scared, and his eyes looked stranger than usual; hollow and colourless and a little unfocused.

"Maybe we should get going," Joey said with forced cheer.

Chris felt his mouth twist into a sneer and couldn't stop himself from saying "Where?" It sounded vitriolic even to him, and Joey flinched.

Chris looked around and saw Justin's wide, scared eyes and Lance's surprised eyes and then JC's angry, angry eyes and got up and started walking down the street.


	3. a whole lot of things

The constant light was starting to get on his nerves. He suppressed an urge to shake his fist at the sky and curse it.

He stopped and looked up. He looked around. He could see them walking towards him, four blurry smudges of pale colour in the chilly haze. He looked up again. The sky was uniformly pale grey. It didn't look like an overcast day; it was more like a membrane spread over the entire world. Like they were caught inside an egg, swimming around in the egg white.

He did shake his fist, then, and intoned, "Damn them! Damn them all to hell!"

His voice didn't echo, even though the tall buildings should have caught it and thrown it back to him over and over again.

"So," he said, conversationally, to a lamppost. "Conventional physics don't apply. Good to know."

It sucked to know, though. A whole lot of things sucked right now. He shook his fist once more at the dumb sky and resumed walking. He tried singing a little under his breath. _I don't know where I'm going, only God knows where I've been..._ But the air seemed to suck the life out of the tune, and it sounded flat and hollow to him.

He heard something, suddenly, something like faint whispers rolling in on stagnant air. He spun around and saw that they were jumping up and down and waving at him. They were yelling, he thought.

He walked towards them and then he saw the shadows again. Not just one fat man now, but many. Hordes of them. He was walking in a crowd of diaphanous ghosts. He stopped and stared and they were everywhere. They were walking through him. He backed away from them and hit the display window of the store behind him. A woman in a short summer dress stepped right into him to peer through the window. He felt her. He felt a faint whisper of warmth and a tingling and then he was running, smacking into people as he ran, flinching and passing right through them, and they kept coming. His skin crawled and he ran until his breath was a creaky wheeze and his lungs hurt and his eyes were tearing up.

Then he really smacked into someone, someone who didn't just evaporate into warm, misty tingles. Solid muscle and bone and they went down together.

His mind stopped screaming at him for a second and he blinked away the tears and noticed that he was lying in the middle of the street, on top of JC. Then there were hands on him, gentle hands helping him up, and Justin said, "Chris, dude, are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said and looked around. Justin held on to his arm as if he thought he was going to go running off again. "Freaked the fuck out, though."

"You were running like a headless chicken," Lance said. "What was that about?"

Chris looked down at JC, who was sitting on the ground with his arms around his knees. Joey was sitting next to him. JC looked up. Chris met his eyes.

"Sorry," he said, and he didn't just mean the running tackle.

*

The shadows were gone again and they settled down on the metal chairs outside a little café.

"I don't think they're dead," JC said slowly. He was rubbing his shoulder and wincing a little. Chris tried to decide whether he was doing it subconsciously or on purpose just to make Chris feel bad. He couldn't quite see JC being that manipulative, but a lot of things seemed to have changed.

"They're ghosts," Justin said. "I walked right through them. It's like a whole town full of ghosts."

Chris thought he saw the reflection of a young man walking past in the window and snapped his head around, but the street was empty and still.

"No," JC was saying, "I think...I think we're the ghosts."

"Are we dead?" Joey asked. "Is that what you're saying?"

They all looked at Chris, then. "What did you do?" JC asked. "Just tell us."

But he couldn't tell them. He'd just picked a page and mumbled the words because they sounded good and angry. Reciting mumbo-jumbo from some cheap second-hand hobby spell book shouldn't open portals to other dimensions.

"Who says it was me, anyway," he muttered.

*

They were tired again. It seemed like they'd moved forward exactly one block, but they were exhausted. There were no more ghosts. They sat in the uncomfortable chairs until Chris couldn't bear it anymore and got up and paced for a while. After a while, Justin joined him in the pacing.

"Chris," Justin said when they were on their sixteenth lap.

"What?" Chris said.

"Stop."

He stopped. Justin stopped next to him. They were just across the street from the other guys, but again it looked like half a mile.

"What?" Chris said again. Justin had dug his hands into his jean pockets and was swaying lightly to and fro, like a tree in a light breeze. Chris recognised it as Justin's thinking pose. In the soft, scattered light, Justin looked pale and ethereal; Chris let himself think _saint_ before he mentally scoffed and added, _hardly_.

It still looked a little like Justin had a halo; a faint shimmering around him.

"Look, I know what you were doing. You were just fucking around, but it was...you found it, somehow."

He looked into Justin's softly shining face and wondered why he hadn't been casting love spells over him instead.

"I guess I did," he said. "I don't know what it is, though."

He'd picked JC because JC was an easy target. JC was lonely and sad sometimes. JC needed to be cheered up. Justin was off limits and JC wasn't.

He hoped that last one wasn't actually the real reason. He looked back across the street and saw that JC was sitting alone now. Joey and Lance were looking through the window into the café, their heads close together. Chris thought they might have been holding hands. They looked like small children peering into a candy store.

JC turned his head and stared back at Chris.

"I didn't mean it," he told Justin. "Not that way, at least."

"I know," Justin said, and his voice was warm and gentle. Justin always believed in Chris.


	4. how convenient

JC looked at him all the time. It was starting to get unnerving, as if Chris wasn't feeling this place making his nerves fray at the edges all on its own.

He didn't know who first noticed it - maybe Lance; Lance tended to notice things - but suddenly they were aware of things happening around them.

Doors opened and closed. Closed signs disappeared. Streetlights turned from green to red. Always when they were looking away. Chris tested it by staring at a light for ten minutes. Nothing happened. Then he thought of his watch and looked at it to see if it was still working, and when he looked up, the light had changed.

Their watches had all stopped. This surprised no one.

"I guess we're officially caught in one of those really wackass X-files episodes," Justin said.

"All that's missing now is Queequeg," Chris said.

*

"We need a plan," Justin suggested. "We can't be running up and down this damn street. You'd think there's only one street in all of LA."

"This isn't LA, Justin," JC said. "We don't know where we are."

Justin scowled at him and waved an impatient hand in the general direction of the rest of everything. "What is it, then? It looks like LA--"

"Maybe it's your fucked up nightmare, I don't KNOW," JC growled and they all sat up a little straighter. Chris bit his lip and stayed quiet.

"We still need a plan," Justin said.

"We could just camp out in, like, the hotel or something," Lance said mildly. "It looks like we're not moving. We've been walking for days, and we're not getting anywhere. Maybe we should just wait."

"What hotel?" Chris said, but his head turned almost automatically to look behind him, and the natty glass door said HOTEL.

How convenient.

He pushed the door open and thought he heard the jingle of a little bell somewhere far away.

The lobby was wrapped in soft, grey shadows. The floors looked dusty and unwashed at first, but when he took his first steps on it, he saw that it was just a trick of the light. He could almost see his reflection in it if he squinted a little.

They walked past the small restaurant in the hotel, and he thought he saw more ghosts there, eating their hotel food and talking and moving around, but they didn't come near him and there were no warm tingly feelings.

He realised he'd started missing eating. He wasn't hungry, but he missed the whole deal - smelling food and cutting it up and putting it in his mouth, chewing and swallowing. He couldn't imagine doing it anymore, but he missed it.

He couldn't smell food, even though there were plates laden with pasta and steaks and fried vegetables and potatoes and gravy on the tables. He turned away and headed for the stairs.

They couldn't turn on any lights, but there was a hazy glow in the hallways, as if the light from outside was a mist, floating into buildings along with them.

One room on the second floor was unlocked. How convenient, Chris thought again.

Walking up the stairs had sapped him of his strength again. He had a quick image of this fucked up world as some kind of giant amoeba, and of them trapped inside its membranes, being slowly digested. That's what it felt like for sure. He held up his hand and told himself he was being melodramatic. His hand didn't look shrivelled or old. It looked exactly like the everyday Kirkpatrick hand: small but not effeminate, the nails short because he had never been able to break the nervous habit of nibbling on them but clean and tidy because fame and fortune brought perks, such as regular manicures.

The bed was a double. There was also a sofa. They stood inside the door like a flock of lost sheep, and Chris felt their eyes on him.

The silence seemed to take on a life of its own. It wasn't just the absence of sound.

"I'll take the damn sofa," he said, finally.

Joey and Lance shrugged as one man, but Justin looked distressed for a second. Then JC said, sharply, "Fine," and Justin threw Chris an apologetic glance and went to sit on the bed.


	5. hard underneath

Dream: _They're singing, for all they're worth. He can't hear it, but he can feel the sound leaving his throat, full and clear and perfect, and he can feel the satisfying hum of the harmonies hitting perfect pitch, of five voices becoming one. He doesn't know what they're singing. _

The church around them is a cathedral, an enormous, gilded structure; the Notre Dame of Paris rendered in gold and marble.

It's empty, save for the five of them and a small, green-clad figure sitting in a front pew. Chris can't see his face, doesn't want to. He turns away, looks at his friends, their glowing, enraptured faces.

JC opens his eyes and meets his, and the harmony breaks and shatters and

*

Chris gasped his way out of the dream, clamped down on the scream and all that came out was a choked little whimper.

He unfolded himself from the sofa. His neck hurt. The room was still as light as it had been when he fell asleep.

On the bed, Joey, Lance and Justin had clumped together like a litter of kittens. Justin had his arms twined around Lance. Lance was leaning his head on Joey's shoulder.

JC wasn't there.

*

The door was open and he tiptoed out into the corridor outside. For some reason, it felt wrong to make sounds, to disturb the stale air. His chest ached dully and he noticed that he was holding his breath. He curled his hands into fists and exhaled slowly, inhaled even slower. He could hear his heart thumping, blood pounding in the veins at the sides of his neck.

The faintly shimmering ghost of an old lady with a broom appeared in front of him and walked right through him with light steps, leaving a tingling, and he had to force himself to breathe again. He walked on, towards the slight shift in the light at the end of the corridor.

JC was standing at the window, outlined in the arch of it, looking out.

When he turned and met Chris' eyes, Chris felt the memory of his dream drag cold fingernails down his back. He flinched and felt stupid. It was just JC, wearing the same worn jeans and Giants t-shirt he had for days now. JC with his curls floating in small listless clouds around his head, backlit by the window. His eyes fell in shade, for some reason, even though there were no real shadows here, just spots with slightly less light.

"Can't sleep?" Chris asked. He couldn't get his voice to rise above a whisper.

Even though he couldn't see JC's eyes, he felt them harden. "I miss my life," JC said. His voice sounded dry and harsh, like a drumbeat. He didn't sound miserable or plaintive.

Chris opened his mouth to say, "I'm sorry," but closed it again.

JC looked like he wanted to say something more, something harder, but he seemed to be holding it back. When he turned back to the window, his eyes gleamed in the light, and they looked pale, pale blue, like Justin's eyes.

Another ghost brushed past Chris - an elderly white guy in a suit and tie - and Chris shivered and stepped away and somehow bumped into JC. JC twirled around with perfect, furious grace and lifted his hand.

Chris caught it on the way to his face and held it, his fingers crushing JC's thin wrist, harder than he wanted to, not hard enough. JC bared his teeth at him and Chris felt the screaming wrongness of his dream in this. He wasn't breathing again and his chest was burning.

JC stared at him. Chris could see his eyes clearly now, and they were hard and it was wrong in every way, and he couldn't believe this, couldn't find the place he turned wrong, couldn't find what he did to make it like this.

JC's eyes blurred and tears leaked from the corners, but they stayed hard underneath it. Chris couldn't make himself let go of JC's wrist. He was using all his force; his fingers ached and his arm was starting to throb with every heartbeat.

He tried to remember again; what had he done? Why had he done it?

JC's face was pale and hazy-smooth, his skin translucent over sharp bones. They'd been here for how long? but there was no stubble on his chin, just the ridiculous strip of softly shiny brown hair. Chris remembered wrestling JC one day, tickling him into submission and pulling a pair of neon green bikini underwear over his face. JC had laughed and swatted helplessly at him and said, afterwards, "You're just bitter cause you don't have a pretty face to fuck up."

JC laughing seemed like something that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away and here JC was staring at him with his newly hard eyes. Chris blinked and saw something moving behind JC, down on the street, but when he blinked again, it was gone.

"Let me go," JC said.

"No," Chris said and twisted JC's wrist upwards, made JC cry out and step closer, and it shouldn't have made it easier to breathe to know that it hurt, but it did.

"Let me go," JC said, but he wasn't really struggling. Chris leaned closer and put his mouth against JC's face, rested his lips on the sharp ridge of a cheekbone. JC shivered and Chris felt tendons tighten like piano wires in his wrist.

Then JC turned his face and his mouth was hard and angry on Chris', and he twisted his body around and Chris lost his grip on his wrist and lost the upper hand.

He felt sharp teeth on his lip and sharp fingers on his arms and JC muttered something into his mouth that might have been "I hate you" or "I love you" or neither.

JC pushed him backwards and he tripped over his own feet and fell gracelessly, bones rattling and teeth clicking together painfully around the tip of his tongue. JC landed catlike on top of him without crashing into him. Chris fought to catch his breath, fought and thought he might lose the fight for a second, and then JC kissed him again and he sucked in a great gulp of recycled air and the pain in his diaphragm unravelled and spread through his chest and abdomen and faded.

"How long?" JC hissed. "How long did you want this?"

"I didn't," Chris lied. "I-- don't."

JC had a leg between his, knee bent and his thigh was pushing against Chris' crotch, too hard, too fucking hard and it hurt. Chris snapped his teeth together around JC's tongue and lifted his hips. JC got a hand between their chests, pressed his fist knuckles first into Chris' chest, right at the breastplate, over the heart, and that hurt, too. He pressed hard, like a slow motion punch, like he wanted to split Chris' chest open under his fist.

"I dreamed I tore you open," JC said, his voice raw and crackling. Chris bucked his hips again, crushed his aching cock against JC's leg and closed his eyes. He didn't mean to, but he thought of Justin, for a second only. Justin's long body pressed against his, Justin's gentle hands on his shoulders.

"That's not who he is," JC said, hardly out of breath when Chris was gasping and trying to get air into compressed lungs, and ground down hard. "He's not fifteen anymore."

You don't know what I think, Chris wanted to say, but he heard something, a faint whisper somewhere, tickling his ears with the knowledge that he'd missed something. JC licked his sore mouth and thrust against him once, twice, shuddered and groaned softly. Chris felt him go limp for all of two seconds, and then he was backing off, getting up again, walking away.

Chris sat up and cupped his aching groin gingerly, too exhausted to be as angry as he should be. He thought about jerking off and decided against it.

He looked over his shoulder, out the window, and saw creatures moving around down on the street.


	6. almost like before

Running down the stairs winded him, like he was in no fucking shape at all, which bugged the shit out of him, frustrated him enough to make him spit and scream, but he didn't have the breath to do anything but wheeze.

Opening the front door of the hotel took all his strength, but he did it and he was outside, in the eternal, hazy afternoon, and they were still there, small, ratlike black things crawling all over the sidewalks. They didn't seem to notice him.

"You fuckers, what ARE you?" he yelled after them, but they ignored him and crawled right on.

It occurred to him that he might want to be scared now, but he wasn't. They didn't look dangerous. They were toothless and hairless, like weird mutant rats with clear, blue eyes and short legs.

He counted thirty, forty, forty-five just on the sidewalk outside the hotel.

"This is stupid," he told them. "This is another fucking dream."

He tried to catch one, ran after it and it squealed and slunk away, and suddenly the ground heaved and hit his face.

He tried to get up but it felt like he was going blind. He knew it was just because his eyes were rolling up in their sockets, that he was passing out, but it FELT like he was going blind. He wasn't the passing out kind.

He clawed at the asphalt and tried to make his head clear and let him feel things again, but it didn't hurt, even when he knew he'd scratched his fingers bloody. He was tasting blood, too, and thought he might have smacked his face pretty bad. He couldn't feel any pain, and that scared him more than anything.

*

Dream: _He's in a bedroom, a big, white bedroom. He's sitting on a four-post bed, on white, pristine sheets. White, pristine curtains flutter gently in a breeze he can't feel. He's naked and his body feels different. He stands up and the floor is too far down. When he touches his own skin, it's smoother and the muscles underneath it are firmer than his have been in years. _

There's someone in the bed. Someone who groans softly and turns over and blinks and fixes him with dark eyes and says,

"Are you okay, baby?"

His face, his voice, and he backs away from the bed and bumps into a wall and the wall is a mirror. He doesn't turn around because he doesn't want to know.

*

He didn't think he'd screamed, but when he forced his eyes open, JC was staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.

"I thought you were dead," JC said softly. He didn't look angry now.

Chris tried to tell him to get his shit together or something, no one was fucking dying here, but his mouth hurt like a sonofabitch, and it felt like he might have chipped a tooth.

He heard sobbing and raised voices somewhere off in the distance. That would be Justin having a nervous breakdown, then, and Joey and Lance trying to talk him down.

JC touched his face, his fingers curiously gentle. Almost like before. "I guess I didn't want you to die," he said. It sounded like he was talking to himself.

"I dreamed about--" Chris whispered, but cut off. He didn't know. He could almost feel the blank, cool surface of the mirror behind him. He could turn around and look. Now he felt like his own mouth wasn't his own.

"This place is a dream," JC said.

*

When Chris finally managed to stand up, Justin was there, touching him carefully, like he'd suddenly turned into fragile crystal. Justin's eyes were swollen and red. It looked weird to see his eyelashes flutter and his mouth tremble. Most of the time, these days, he looked like a slapheaded thug, but at times like this, Chris was sure the whole transformation Justin had gone through was skin deep only. He walked proud and talked loud, but he had a soft, weak place in him that all the walk and talk in the world couldn't hide.

Chris looked around, but the ratcreatures were long gone. He'd touched the one he was chasing; felt its soft, dry skin.

"Did you see those things?" he asked.

"What things?" Justin said and that pretty much answered the question. He put an unsteady arm around Justin's shoulders. Justin leaned against him as if he was the one with the bump in the forehead and the split lip.

Chris leaned his head against his shoulder for a second, turned his face into his neck and closed his eyes. When he pulled back, there was a smear of blood on Justin's pale skin.

When they got back to the second floor, the door to the room they'd used was locked.

*

They slept on the floor in the hallway, and Chris was sandwiched between Justin and Lance, and JC's arm was around Justin's waist, and Chris felt Joey's hand reach for him across Lance.

He didn't dream.


	7. so many things wrong

Something was touching his face, light, feathery touches, tickling touches. He sneezed and woke up.

He was clinging to JC like JC was the last lifeboat in a storm. He'd pressed his face into JC's soft hair; he could smell the faint traces of lemon-scented shampoo.

It was quiet. He couldn't hear JC breathing. He couldn't hear anything.

"Um," he said. "JC?"

JC didn't move. Chris took a deep gulp of air, got JC's hair instead, jerked upright and pushed JC hard.

JC exploded out of sleep and tackled him, panther-fast and silent, and his hands were like a steel wire around Chris' throat, tightening.

Chris opened his mouth and got no air. JC's face was horribly impassive.

Chris twisted and got his knee up and kicked. JC grunted and fell on him, crushing him into the carpet, but the grip on his throat loosened.

"Jesus," he panted, "Jesus fucking CHRIST--"

JC was too heavy on top of him, and what the fuck was going on, anyway, where the fuck was everyone else, and wh--

"JC?" he said. "JC?"

"Chris?" someone else said - Justin, it was Justin, in a small, breathy voice - "Chris, what?"

"Mmmmmh," JC said and lifted his head from Chris' chest. Chris saw Justin's arms come around JC's neck and shoulders, pulling him away, and Chris could breathe again.

"Are you okay there?" Joey said on his other side, and Chris gulped down precious, precious air and looked around.

"Where's Lance?" he wheezed.

Only Joey heard him, because Justin was busy stroking JC's hair and murmuring softly to him. JC had buried his face in the crook of Justin's neck.

"I don't know," Joey said.

*

Back on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. The street was empty again. The light was the same. Some doors had opened or closed, some streetlights had changed, but otherwise everything was just like before.

"Where the hell did he go?" Joey said. He was looking mildly frantic, pacing up and down the sidewalk and peering through display windows.

JC stood behind Justin, a little wild-eyed but pretty calm under the circumstances. No one had mentioned the fact that Chris couldn't fucking speak for shit because his throat was bruised, or that JC had tried to kill him. Justin threw them both nervous glances every once in a while, but he wasn't saying anything, either.

"We have to, we have to look for him," Justin said now.

"How?" Chris said, but he was thinking about options. Lance had wandered off somewhere. Then JC got murderous all of a sudden. Bad shit was going down, in short.

"Someone might have taken him," Joey said. "Someone could've just, I don't fucking know, fucking BEAMED him up to the goddamn mothership--"

"Shut up, Joey," Chris said. His head hurt a little, but not as much as his throat. He could feel every one of JC's fingers, every time he swallowed. On top of that, his mouth and forehead still hurt from hitting the sidewalk earlier. I'm doing a John McClane, he thought and said, "I don't think anyone took him. He walked off on his own two feet. It's this place. It makes people...do stuff," and he couldn't help glaring at JC then, and JC glared back.

"So what do we do?" Justin said. He was looking strangely fragile again. It was as if this place sapped him of all his character - his eyes were childlike and plaintive. JC looked like a thug next to him, and there were just so many things wrong with that image that Chris had to turn away.

No one said anything for a while.

"He'll be back," JC said suddenly, just as Chris had decided to attempt something cheering on his own. He didn't think he could have managed quite the gusto JC had. JC sounded like he believed it.

"Then we'll wait," Chris said because he wanted the last word.

They waited.


	8. his own nightmare

They sat on the curb in a morose row, Chris keeping Justin - and some safe distance - between himself and JC.

He was trying very hard not to think at all. It was tricky, though, because what else was there to do here? The city looked the same and he didn't think that would change anytime this millennium. He hadn't seen any more ratcreatures, and somehow, he didn't think they'd be any help even if they came up to eat from his hand.

He tried to count back to see how long they'd been here, but he kept losing count. The days and nights didn't have any characteristics he could hold on to. He remembered things happening, mostly painful things, but it was hard to say when exactly they'd happened. Maybe they were all happening right now, in an endless loop. Maybe they were sitting in a bubble in the space-time continuum. Maybe they were brains in a vat, maybe this was his own nightmare that he'd soon wake up from.

He looked around and caught JC staring at him past Justin.

Chris suppressed an urge to snap, "You lookin' at me?" Instead, he tried to remember his real life. The good old days. He tried to count the times he'd seen JC really angry. There were a couple of big, juicy fights with Bobbie, but those mostly involved Bobbie slapping JC silly and calling him a dick with no balls and JC just taking it with bovine patience.

JC sometimes yelled at Justin and he sometimes yelled at Chris, but he'd never gotten really angry that Chris could remember. Never. Definitely wouldn't hurt a fly.

Chris rubbed his aching throat gingerly and glanced over at JC, who was still staring at him.

"Do you feel different?" Chris asked.

"Yes," JC said.

*

"I want to go home," Justin whispered and leaned his head on Chris' shoulder. "I'm tired all the time and I feel like. Like." He lifted his hand slowly to touch his own face. "Like I'm not in here anymore."

"How come?" Chris asked, mainly out of morbid curiosity. Justin looked like shit; hollow-eyed and his skin seemed too small for his face, stretched tight over the bones. His lips were blue-tinted, Chris realised. Justin looked like he was dying.

"It's like a nightmare where half of you is out flying over the rooftops and the rest is trapped inside you or something, I don't know. It makes me tired." He crept even closer and rubbed his face against Chris' neck. Chris winced but let him, put an arm around him and remembered a time when Justin had more energy than him.

"I know," he said. He did.

"I keep having these fucked up dreams, too. Nightmares inside this other nightmare," and he giggled a little nervously, a sharp, shrill titter. Chris saw JC turn his head to the sound, cock it like a bird. He'd been talking softly to Joey, some kind of comforting little ramble that Chris hadn't thought this new JC could manage anymore.

Joey was looking better, though, so maybe it was just Chris who thought JC had changed.

"What's in your dreams, baby?" he asked Justin, and it was a testament to Justin's fucked up state that he didn't even slap Chris for the 'baby'.

"Stuff," he said, and his voice broke a little. "People turn into monsters. I turn into a monster. It's stupid, I guess, but."

"I know," Chris said again. And he did.

*

Chris saw him coming long before he bothered telling anyone. He looked down the street and there he was, a shimmering outline in the haze. It looked a little like he was on fire, white, blinding fire, but that was just a trick of the light.

After some time, he said, "Lance is back."


	9. great special effects

No one asked anything. Lance sat down on the curb next to Joey and they all sat quietly again. Chris noticed that nobody looked at him. Chris tried, but it was as if his eyes wouldn't stay on Lance long enough to get a good look; they kept sliding off like drops of water off an oily surface. And it was a little like Lance was covered in some kind of oil; there was a faint iridescent shimmer around him, visible in the corner of the eye. It was camouflage, Chris thought, obvious but still effective.

Freaky shit. Chris looked at Justin instead.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, not because he wanted to know - God knows he didn't; Justin looked too-old/too-young and fragile and Chris thought he might be better off not knowing what it felt like to be Justin right now - but because he needed to say something before it was too late to break the silence.

"I'm okay," Justin said. He was lying through his teeth.

"Sure you are," Chris said, and he didn't think he managed to keep the sarcasm down. He touched Justin's white face. The skin, pulled tight over his bones, felt dry, hot, paper-thin.

"I'll be okay," Justin promised, "don't worry," and JC turned his head sharply and glared at him. Chris saw him pull in a breath to say something and said quickly, just to stop him,

"What was the last thing you thought of before...this happened?"

That was right from some hidden place inside him, that one, but it was a good question, he supposed. Maybe relevant. Maybe even important.

Justin blinked and Chris thought he'd have to clarify, but then Justin lowered his eyes and he might have been blushing if he hadn't been so deathly pale - if there had been enough blood left in him to go around. "I was thinking about you," he said, and his stiff shoulders, his refusal to look up gave it away, gave away just what he'd been thinking. Chris, who had been thinking about JC to avoid thinking about Justin, felt guilty and ignored it.

He met JC's cold eyes over Justin's bowed head. He thought: It could have been so easy to unmess this mess. Too late was something he'd rather never think.

"I was thinking about you, too," Joey said. It was Chris' turn to blink, but Joey continued, "--probably not in the same way, though," and he actually managed something resembling a leer. "I was going to kick your ass for that shit you pulled on JC."

JC got up, with strangely jerky movements, and stomped across the street. Chris saw him snap his head to the side and spit on some defenceless gutter stone.

"It wasn't supposed to be like that," Chris said helplessly. Forgive me, he thought, for I knew not what I did. He felt stupid but couldn't stop himself from repeating, "It wasn't."

"I know," Joey said.

"We're sitting here like a bunch of beached whales," Chris said with heat he didn't know he had left in him, "and look around! There aren't any fences here, no guards. We could just--"

"It's a loop, stupid," Lance said, and everyone, even JC from way across the street, jumped.

Chris forced his eyes to accept that Lance existed, rainbow shimmer be damned. Far be it from Chris to iconify Lance, but he looked older now, wiser. Fucking sage, Chris thought and groaned inwardly. Gentle, wise Lance was about as believable as permanently aggressive JC. All bets were off.

"We could walk until the sun explodes and we'd never even find another street," Lance said. His voice had that same shimmer to it, like whatever it was had seeped down his throat and clung to his vocal cords. "But there's, like, a portal."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"I asked," Lance said.

They all really tried to look at him, then. Chris had to give up after a while and watched Joey slump from the effort, Justin shake his head in distress, JC freeze with his back ramrod-straight and his head held high.

"Asked who?" Justin asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Over there," Lance said and pointed. His arm was a faint outline in swirling colour that made Chris' eyes tear up.

They looked.

"Oh, _there_," Chris said sarcastically, just to be a pain in the ass, but then he did see it.

He - they - must have been seriously blind. Looking past some big fucking things. I mean, he thought, you normally wouldn't miss a huge, shock-pink fucking gala entrance complete with blinking gold stars and a goddamned red carpet reaching out into the middle of the empty street.

Lance grinned at them, wolfishly, and said, "Yeah, now you see it."

"Wow," Justin said softly and Chris heard his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. He took Justin's hand and held it.

"We don't have passes for that," JC said loudly. "That's not for us, Lance. What did you DO?"

"There's a trick to it," Lance said. "It's waiting for us."

"Okay," Chris said, "okay, okay, this is starting to sound seriously fucked up."

He felt the annoyed glare Lance shot him rather than saw it.

"I guess, um. I guess we should--" Joey said, tentatively. "How?"

"We have to--" Lance started, but he didn't get any further because JC said, loudly,

"NO." They all turned, like the audience at a tennis game. JC had crossed his arms in front of his chest, set his jaw, spread his legs a little. He looked like he was spoiling for a fight. "We're not-- You're not seriously thinking about going in there, are you?"

"It's the way out," Lance said calmly.

"Out of WHAT? To WHAT?"

Lance didn't answer. JC stood where he stood. Chris looked at the pink gate, red carpet, golden stars. The colours were hurting his eyes; they were brighter, more real, more there than anything else in this fucked up city. He thought maybe the city was a dream, but the gates were solid reality. He'd only been so caught up in the haze of the cold, pale hallucination that he'd been looking past the Technicolor reality that had surely been there all along. All along, when they'd walked up and down this street like hamsters running in a wheel.

Justin leaned his head against his shoulder again, breathed softly on his neck; warm, damp air that felt alien to Chris. Not bad, though, just out of place. He wanted more of it, so he turned his head and lifted his hand, touched Justin's pale face, put his mouth on his mouth, breathed warm, damp, used air that felt lighter and sweeter than the dry harsh air around them. Justin moved slowly against him, twined his arms around him neck; long, stronger than Chris had thought they'd be at this point.

"That's the idea, but we need more," Lance said. "We have to, like, share."

"You don't know what you're doing," JC said, "you don't have the first fucking clue."

Lance ignored him. So did everyone else. Chris twisted himself away from Justin and missed the warmth like someone cut it out of him with a dull knife. Justin looked better, though, marginally better. Maybe that's what we've been missing, Chris thought. It would be a really fucking obvious thing to miss. Cold, harsh planet? Share the goddamn body heat. He felt stupid.

"What do we have to do?" Justin asked. Chris thought there was colour creeping up his cheeks, but he might have been imagining it. Wishful thinking.

"Come closer," Lance said softly. He was still hard to look at. Like the gates, he was too bright to focus on but unlike the gates, he looked unreal, half-human. "Closer."

"He's a liar," JC said harshly; it was almost a growl. "Lying piece of shit. Do you want to die?"

"Shut up, JC," Joey said and moved over a little so they could gather round. Chris moved because he couldn't see what else to do. The gates glowed fire-pink in the corner of his eye. He was holding Justin's hand, but couldn't remember taking it. Maybe Justin reached for him.

"What, like a group hug?" Justin said, a little hesitantly. "What should we--"

Lance reached for him, quickly, and Chris saw sparkles fly, the golden oil stuff was sparkling and it was alive, he thought, alive and reaching for Justin with Lance. Oooh, he thought, oooh, aaaah, so THAT'S how it is.

"Far out," Justin said and leaned in.

Far out, Chris thought. This fucked up movie has great special effects.


	10. shiny shiny smile

Just before Lance's hand touched Justin's face, Chris saw something move behind them, a bit down the street. The ratcreatures again, milling like dark snakes out of gutters and manholes. He blinked, but they didn't go, and he thought he saw them snake through shadows of people, too. So he missed the first touch. He did hear Justin gasp, Joey say, in a weak voice, "fucking HELL," JC whisper - it was a cry, but soft as a whisper - "no."

And he looked away from the dark shapes and saw light catch on steel - how could it reflect that sharply when the damn light was fuzzier than his grandma's cardigan? - and Justin gasped again and Chris saw blood that was obscenely bright. He almost cried out, too, but then he saw it was only a shallow cut in Justin's broad palm, a scrape that swelled and grew brighter crimson as the blood welled up.

"Didn't see that one coming," Justin said, but he was smiling. Lance's hand on his cheek left a trace, a smear of gold.

"So, this is like a pact, then?" Joey said. "Blood brothers and shit. You've read too many fantasy novels, Lance."

"Blood brothers in the stormy night!" Chris said, giddy now. He'd never done the whole blood vow thing. Sometimes he'd thought they might have been a little better off swearing loyalty forever and ever. Them. All of them, brothers and bound together. Whoah. And Lance's grin was broad and showed a lot of teeth, and Justin's smile was dazed, and they leaned together again and Lance's hand closed around Justin's, hiding the blood.

Chris looked away for a second, looked across the street, and JC was standing there surrounded by the creatures and the ghosts, but they weren't touching him. Just moved around him in randomly organised circles and spirals.

Justin glowed golden and Chris reached out, his hand with the palm up. Lance took it and the grin stayed in place. The blade was the Leatherman tool Justin had given him for his last birthday.

He looked back again and JC was farther away than ever, and then there was the sharp bite of the blade and. And. And.

"Far out," he whispered and squeezed Lance's hand through the little pain and the big golden LIGHT in his head. Lance was totally the dude. Dude, Lance, man--

*

At one point, he looked up - when did he just lie down? - and saw Justin stand above him. Look, nudity, he thought, and Justin was sort of naked, maybe, only not. Chris wasn't sure how someone could be both naked and not naked at the same time, but Justin was pulling it off in a big way. And Joey and Lance-- they were there, somewhere, Lance next to him, sitting cross-legged on the street with light playing on his beautiful, beautiful face. Beautiful Lance, beautiful Justin, beautiful Joey lying next to Chris with a smile, shiny shiny smile on his face.

"Okay, we can go now," he said. "I'm good to go."

"Yeah," Justin said and turned around, and his not-clothes swirled around him like big white clouds. Or wings, maybe. Clothes that weren't clothes were wings instead. Okay. Next to Chris, Joey laughed and it sounded like a wolf howling.

His hand didn't hurt at all, but when he looked at it, he saw the wound in his palm, mad red and open, way bigger than he'd thought it was - Lance only scratched him, didn't he, but this looked like he'd been gashed deep enough to cut through tendons and muscle and hit bone.

He was looking at his hand, flexing it and watching the meat move around in the wound, the glimpses of white that could be bone. It should have looked sickening, he thought, but it was kind of cool, really.

"Hey, dude," he said and rolled over, scrambled to his feet. Everything was moving and standing still at the same time. He wanted to say that, but he had something else, something else to talk about. Oh, oh. "Dude, dude, look at my hand--"

Justin twirled around and the wing things that weren't clothes fluttered over Chris' face. Felt like cobwebs with drops of cold water clinging to the strands; silvery, it felt silvery. Justin held up his hand and Chris marvelled at the deep wound in it. He thought he saw other things in that - metal things. Justin smiled at him and his teeth were even whiter and shinier than before. His skin was perfect peach and cream smooth. Chris touched him with his whole hand. He felt real.

"Come on," Lance said and Chris saw that he didn't shimmer anymore. He just looked very real, very Lance, if Lance usually wore a coat made of feathers. Lance wasn't talking to him, though, Lance was going across the street, Lance was going after JC. Or-- Chris squinted and concentrated, and maybe that was JC, that pale, haggard thing. It sort of looked like him. Poor JC.

He turned back to Justin. Joey had also gotten up and was pulling his hands through the gossamer weave of Justin's not-clothes.

Chris saw maybe-it's-JC swing at Lance and miss, and Lance grab his hand. It must be JC, Chris thought, and JC bared his teeth at Lance and twisted from his grip. Chris couldn't hear his voice, but he looked like he was cursing.

Chris closed his eyes and noticed that the pink gates he'd almost forgotten in the excitement were glowing so brightly that he saw them through his eyelids.

He started walking. After five steps, he stumbled and remembered to open his eyes.

The gates loomed in the way only twenty feet worth of shock pink, star-spangled gala entrance can.

They stood on the red carpet. It was a familiar feeling - red carpet, all that was missing were the screaming fans, and Chris thought he could almost hear them already. They were all dolled up, too; he looked at Justin and saw the blood in his veins, right through his skin. Pink and crimson and purple little rivers. And Joey looked great, like his hair was thicker and glossier and his beard seemed to have grown a lot since the last time Chris looked at him, but it was shiny-glossy, too, like cat fur.

Lance looked at him with eyes that were a lot greener than Chris remembered. So that's what they mean by peridot eyes, he thought, I get it. He could even stretch himself to think, emerald. They did look like gems, a little cold, but beautiful and faceted in ways that made the light catch and sparkle in them.

He looked up and felt confident that the pink doors would swing open when he reached them.

There was just one thing, though, a little nagging worry. A worry-baby, if you will. His worry-baby mewled and stretched its tiny hands towards him, and he spun around - whoo! It felt like spinning a kaleidoscope if you were _inside_ it - and knew that he was worried about JC, who was missing, gone, he was maybe completely gone-- But no. There he was, such as he was, standing behind them, standing and now trying to back off slowly. Poor JC. The worry-baby withered and died. Chris grabbed JC's skeletal arm and dragged him along, and the rest closed rank around them, and when the doors did swing open, Chris pushed JC in first.


	11. easier after that

For some reason, he turned around and looked behind him, even though it felt like a bad idea - Lot's wife, anyone? He didn't turn into a pillar of salt, but he saw the rat creatures congregate outside the door, quiet and still now, a horde of sad-eyed, wrinkly-skinned beings. Staring morosely at him. He felt a strange, wrong stab of sympathy and then the doors slammed closed with the finality of a crypt gate.

"Again with the special effects," Chris muttered and turned back to the rest of them. And gasped.

Oh, he thought, oh, oh, _so beautiful_. He stumbled towards them, almost fell over something crouching on the carpet, something small and shrivelled and insignificant, finally hopped over it and caught Justin around the neck, touched his beautiful face, kissed his beautiful face. Oh, oh, oh, he couldn't stop thinking. His brain had developed a speech impediment. Next to him, Joey threw his head back and howled, and Chris felt the sound pierce his skin and vibrate through his own chest. He slung an arm around Joey, too, and Joey had Lance and together they walked up the red carpet.

There was music. It was merry and pompous, familiar but impossible to place. He turned to Joey and lifted his eyebrows, tried to make his mouth form words. He didn't think it worked, but Joey shook his head - _no idea. but i like it_ \- and Chris leaned in and kissed him because he understood. Joey opened his mouth under his, and Chris felt teeth, a lot of teeth, far more teeth than he was used to.

Which was when he noticed, from the corner of his eye, that there were people in here; people everywhere. He tore loose from Joey and stared.

A lot of people, and they were coming like a tide of brightly coloured dresses and frock coats and jewels and their eyes were bright and shiny and empty. Chris was caught in the tide, pressed between a woman in a green dress that showed her breasts, a mask that showed nothing of her face, and a man with horns on his head.

He turned his head and saw Justin run with other young, shimmering things in diaphanous clothes. Chris blinked and could no longer tell Justin from the rest of them. He turned back to his companions.

"Welcome," the woman said, and the mask moved in a hint of a smile.

*

_He jerks upright in the bed and somehow manages to stifle the scream. _

_"Holy FUCK, what a nightmare," he mutters, because his heart is still pounding; it feels like it's grown to fill his entire body with frantic beats. _

_Next to him, JC wakes up. It's light in the room; the streetlights outside shine through the thin curtains. His eyes catch the cold, white light and look silver-bright and blank. Chris frowns and stares, and JC blinks and says, "What? Are you okay?" _

_"I'm fine," Chris says. JC looks fine, too, nervous smile and bed hair and silver-lit skin. "Hey, since we're both awake and all..." _

_JC's smile widens and holds out his hand. _

_Chris leans over him and kisses him. _

_When he touches his chest, he feels soft fabric and the surprising swell of breasts. _

_There are colours in the light behind his eyelids; no longer the cold streetlight but _

*

mad cabaret colours danced drunken jigs and he opened his eyes and met black eyes through the cat-slanted eyeholes in the mask.

"Wait," he said. "Where's JC?"

"Does it matter?" she said, and he opened his mouth to say, of COURSE it fucking matters, you stupid-- but he forgot.

Her breasts were high and milk-white, with small rosy nipples. When he pressed his face to them, he felt the hands of the horned man on his back and sides, tugging lightly at his clothes.

*

He opened his eyes again and thought he saw Justin's face hover above him, somewhere up in the rafters. Justin's pale face and dead eyes.

He shook himself and got up and there were hands on him again. He remembered, vaguely, taking his clothes off, but here he was, wearing...something again. Not his actual clothes, but what felt like a dress made of cobwebs. He twirled and the hands caught him and pushed him, and he bounced between unseen bodies, unseen hands and the music played on.

*

"I've never been in an orgy before," he told a naked, gleaming man who was very skilfully going down on him.

*

He danced barefoot on a glass floor and in one turn, he met Lance's eyes. Lance looked a little strange these days, for sure, but it wasn't like anything else looked ordinary.

"You look like an owl, dude," Chris said and the world twirled again and Lance was gone and

*

_he opens his eyes (again) and he's lying in a hospital bed. JC sits quietly by his side. His face is wet. _

_"JC?" he croaks - his throat feels like it's been scoured with bleach and a wire brush. _

_"I'm sorry," JC says softly, and new tears well up in his eyes. "There was just nothing they could do." _

_Chris tries to get up, but his arms are tied to the bed with soft cuffs. He struggles and struggles, but he's weak, and he tries to scream when JC turns a gauge on the IV tube and bright green liquid starts dripping but his voice is _

*

hoarser than a bullfrog's. Whoah, he thought, how long have I been here?

"Drink," someone said, and he felt slick glass against his lips and sweet liquid and he drank deeply, thirstily. It all got easier again after that.

*

The next thing he was aware of - really aware, not just living through - was pain. In his hand. Pain, like, whoah, real fucking pain. His hand was burning; it felt like someone had stabbed a knife through it and was busy twisting the blade while pouring salt into the wound.

He gasped for breath and tried to pull his hand back, but it was caught in something.

"Fuck," he said. "FUCK, let me the fuck go--" and then he actually opened his eyes and saw a small, grey shadow curled around his hand. It didn't look strong enough to cause pain, but hell, he was hurting, he was in PAIN and he tried to hit it with his other hand, he wanted to kill it, give it back some. He entertained an image of it crushed into a wet pulp on the shiny floor.

It moved and he saw that it looked a little like one of the rat creatures - soft and colourless and smaller than a man - but not quite. It was still man-shaped, and when it looked up, he knew its eyes.


	12. couldn't stop himself

He still hated it. He knew it was JC and he couldn't stop hating it. There was something in him that tried to stop him, but he lifted his hand to strike and crush it against the wall. It screamed a whispery, reedy scream and clung to his arm. It was no more than three feet tall, skeletal and bent, ugly, ugly, ugly and only half there.

He lifted his hand to strike it and met its eyes before he let it fall. Help me, it mouthed. Help me. Help me.

*

The woman in the green dress passed by. He looked at her as she twirled and it seemed, somehow, like she was hollow. He didn't know how to explain it; things were freaky enough as they were; but she looked like she was made from painted glass. If he scratched at her surface, he'd see the empty bubble inside.

The man who took her hand and led her to the dance floor didn't look any less unreal.

"Shit," Chris said and turned back to the creature clinging to his arm. It weighed nothing and felt like spun glass, both sharp-edged and soft. It didn't look so ugly, he thought. It wasn't really ugly, it was just weak and in pain. He lowered his hand. He couldn't remember why he'd wanted to kill it.

The party continued around him, dance and laughter and bodies rubbing against each other, the music pounding and swallowing all other sounds. Chris felt a pinprick of pain somewhere behind his eyes and he had to look away. It was easier to look at the grey creature, see JC's scared eyes in its face. He touched its forehead with his free hand. It felt soft and prickly with heat; almost like it was electrically charged.

It moved against his hand, butted its head against him like a cat, and his arm ached and his hand tingled and he felt heat pool in his chest and slide downwards. He stroked its electric skin and looked into its wide, blue JC eyes and thought, it's not sick if I know it's JC, right?

It released his arm suddenly and he thought it might be a little bigger now; a little fuller, as if it was swelling from his touch. He reached for it again and the jolt was sharper, brought a little real pain and a rush that was clearly headed for his groin.

He looked around. Beautiful faces, brightly coloured dresses, even white teeth in too-exposed rows, eyes like painted baubles; all in a swirl of colour and sound. No one saw him. He wondered where the rest of them were.

The rest of who?

The rest of.

Them.

A tug on his arm and he followed dumbly into a shaded nook, imagined privacy, and he couldn't stop himself from touching it again and it grew a little more; gained colour and weight, a familiar bone structure under the alien skin, and its eyes were unblinking and unrelenting.

It pressed against his leg and his knees buckled and he slid down the wall. It was in his lap, burrowing against his chest, making his skin flash hot and tingly and he gasped and stroked its smooth-rough back. It squirmed and pushed its tiny, bony paws under his shirt, path of searing heat along his chest and he arched and dug his fingers into its back, its broader, stronger back, its broadening, strengthening back.

It pushed its face into his neck and whispered, in JC's voice, "We're so fucked, Chris, we're trapped here," and he bucked his hips so sharply his back protested and came, and he grabbed JC - pale, too-bony JC, but it was him - and kissed him through the last sparks of orgasm, bit his lip and twined his hands in his dry, tangled hair. JC shuddered and pushed him down, his skin still faintly electric against Chris', and groaned in something that sounded more like pain than pleasure.

He felt battered and ill used, and it hurt a little to breathe again. Like it had outside. Not enough air, or not enough oxygen, or maybe something unhealthy in the air, something that pressed down on his diaphragm and abraded his lungs and rushed thick and harsh through his throat. He noticed that he was sweating rivers, wet-hot-sticky from his scalp to the soles of his feet, and his skin was ticking like a cooling engine, little twitches of confused nerves. JC lay heavy on top of him, his face again pressed into Chris' neck. He was trembling, in exhaustion or emotion or pain or whatthefuckever. Chris untangled his fingers from his hair and patted his back. There was something going on-- somewhere. Something.

Wait.

Wait.

"JC?" he whispered. "JC, what is--" but JC had already pushed himself violently away and hovered above him like a malevolent spirit, his drawn face a mess of too-sharp angles and too-hollow eyes and too-white lips.

"You FUCKER," he hissed and punched Chris in the stomach, got to his feet, a little shakily, and through his efforts to avoid barfing up his lungs, Chris noticed that JC was completely naked.

"Wha-- what-- WHAT?" he squeezed out with hardly any help from his cramping midriff.

JC trembled and knotted his hands into fists and looked like he wanted to pace. There was no space to pace in, just the little corner behind a heavy brocade curtain and beyond that, the crowd of dead, laughing faces.

"We're not okay," JC said. "Don't think for a second--" He broke off and pressed his fists against his eyes, so violently that Chris wanted to grab his arms and force them down. He couldn't get off the floor yet, though, so he didn't.

"JC--" Chris said. He could take small breaths again, one, two, feeling better. "JC, what's."

JC shivered; Chris could see his kneecaps shaking, the tendons on his arms tighten like steel wires under his skin. "We're dying in here," he said slowly.

"I know," Chris said. Not that he did. He had no idea what they were doing. Dying, living, swimming in puke. The party went on, loud and boisterous, and he realised he hadn't thought about anything but the present in, what, hours, days, he didn't know.

"They're gonna feel us," JC said. "They'll try to stop us. Give me your shirt."

"What? From what?"

"I'm naked, Chris. Give me your shirt." He made a jerky, abrupt movement, threw out his hands. He was naked, yeah. Chris forced his muscles to comply and pushed himself up to sit against the wall, fumbled with his shirt buttons. JC crouched in front of him and pushed his hands away, did it himself with ungentle fingers, yanked the shirt down Chris' arms. Hey, kinky, Chris thought mirthlessly and sat up straight and struggled out of the shirt.

"Get up, come on, we have to go," JC muttered and tugged at his hand.

Chris got up, but it made him feel weak and nauseous and he leaned against the wall and tried to find enough air to fill his lungs. "Wait. Where?" he asked. JC was like a dog on the trail now, coiled energy and nerves. Still, in the white, ruffled shirt that barely covered his ass, he looked strangely debauched - wasted and decadent. Chris thought of Sid Vicious and laughed before realising that right now, with his wild eyes and emaciated face, JC looked a lot more like Sid than Chris ever would have thought possible.

"You act like him, too, you crazy fucker," he mumbled and let JC pull him along into the crowd.

*

The crowd felt different now, less welcoming. Less merry. The smiles were twisting into grimaces. Maybe that was just his overactive imagination, but then again, this place was pretty much floating on imagination only, someone's fucked up wet dream turned nightmare.

Whose wet dream? That was a question for the ages. He stumbled behind JC, grabbed at his shirttail, got a handful of slightly bony ass instead. JC slapped his hands away and hissed a curse.

"Okay, okay," Chris said and looked around and saw people staring at them. People, or not-quite-people. "Dude, seriously, they're about to--"

JC turned fast enough to crash right into him and he raised his hands, ready for a punch, but JC just yelled, "Get DOWN!" and pushed him, and Chris landed hard on his ass and saw something heavy fly over them, almost glancing off the back of JC's head.

He threw up his hands and covered his face.


	13. like he was going to war

He didn't notice that still had his eyes tightly screwed shut and his arms protectively over his face until he felt someone tug at them, slap at them and finally claw at them. He cracked open an eye and saw JC, but he couldn't hear what he was saying because there seemed to be a storm raging somewhere close by, inside this ballroom, under the gilded ceiling with the chubby, naked angels squirming against each other in their never-ending orgy.

JC's mouth was screaming at him and he wanted to close his eyes again. There were shadows moving behind JC, like the shadows of tall trees. If tall trees could creep closer.

JC threw himself over Chris, and Chris thought he yelped but couldn't hear his own voice. JC was scrabbling for something on the floor above Chris' head, his breath hot and fear-sour on his face.

The tree-shadows breathed in unison and closed in, too fast, too fast, and Chris thought he was screaming but he couldn't be sure, and then JC got to his feet with one hand pushing heavy and unforgiving against Chris' breastplate, straightened up, and Chris saw something slim and gleaming and lethal in his other hand.

Chris didn't dare close his eyes, so he saw JC swing the - what? sword? machete? huge, shiny razor? - awkwardly but with clenched-jaw force and cut into the stomach of something tall and dark and no longer entirely human.

The blood was insanely red and flew in a graceful arc, flew with every twitch and landed on brilliant gold and dazzling silver and deep blue and warm green, ran in cheerful rivulets over the polished floor and dripped on JC's pale face. The sound that went out with the blood was the thin, piercing screech of an insect, if insects were six feet tall and dressed in green frock coats. Chris stared, unblinking, too surprised to remember to duck or even throw his hands up, and he could suddenly taste it, thick and noxious, running over his tongue.

JC spun and held the sword high - it was a sword; cold, sharp steel, slightly bent like one of those things you saw in the hands of fierce Bedouins in Indiana Jones movies. He was streaked with crimson all over, face, the shirt, his bare legs.

What the hell were those swords called? Chris tried to remember. He'd watched a lot of movies.

"Back the fuck off," JC said in a voice that was calm and unwavering. Chris saw his free hand knotted in a tight fist by his side, though - white-knuckled tight - and thought he might be holding all his fear contained there.

They weren't machetes. Broadswords were straight, katanas were Japanese.

The shadows that no longer looked like trees fell back a step. Chris realised he was sitting on his ass with his mouth open and scrambled to his feet. He felt light-headed and couldn't stop himself from weaving slightly from side to side, but at least he was upright.

A saber! he thought triumphantly. The creature (his brain had long since stopped calling them men or women) JC had struck let out a final groan and keeled over. Chris saw worming, white shapes in all the blood and realised they were its guts, pouring out of the gash in its stomach. He turned away quickly. Everything was suddenly very quiet.

JC started walking. Chris focused on the white of his shirt and followed.

"Dude," he said under his breath. The crowd parted around them. He could hear the soft rustle of clothes; his own harsh breaths; the sound of JC's barefoot steps. "Dude, fill me in here."

"We're gonna find them," JC said loudly, out into the air.

"Okay," Chris said and tried to straighten up. If JC could walk tall with monsters standing in a quiet circle around him, then by God, Chris could too. "You have another one of those?"

"Take one," JC said.

The hall was enormous. It seemed to exist in the same kind of warped space as that endless street outside; for every step, the end of it seemed further away. Oh yeah, this was a good idea, he thought. Fucking JC has gone completely over the high side, lost the last marble. Well, provided he ever had any in the first place, a stipulation that could definitely be disputed--

He stopped. Why the hell was he running around after JC for? JC was a lunatic. That wasn't hard to see, what with the blood on his face and the huge fucking blade in his hand.

He was going to get Chris killed. This was pretty much a given.

Chris turned around. Everyone stood where they stood, beautiful women and handsome men in fantastic costumes. Chris felt underdressed.

A tall, golden-haired woman in a white and gold dress that was so shiny-bright that he had to squint when he looked directly at him smiled a brilliant white smile and said, "We have a change of clothes for you, Mr Kirkpatrick. Just this way."

"Right on," he said and smiled back. Took a step towards her and saw something move in the corner of his eye. Something. Important.

Wait, wait, wait, he thought and chanced a quick sideways glance and saw a familiar face there, in the crowd. Two familiar faces.

"Hey, Joey," he said. "Hey, Lance. What's going on?"

Lance lifted his head from the crook of Joey's neck. His eyes were kohl-rimmed and impossibly round. There were feathers in his hair. "Hi, Chris," he said, his voice soft and slow, crème de menthe flowing over ice.

He turned back to the smiling woman. "Hey, look, I'm gonna. Um. I'm gonna hang out with those guys for a. Um. While..." He trailed off as her smile slipped off her face. Like magic, one second it was there, the next it was just gone, replaced by a stonefaced stare.

The guy next to her had a short sword in his belt.

Chris looked down at himself. His chest was bare and painted with a light spattering of blood. His hands were trembling.

Oh, fuck.

"Oh, you fuckers," he said. He looked up and met Lance's eyes, Joey's eyes. Their dazed eyes with blown pupils.

Note to self: they have evil brain mojo. Stay sharp.

He smiled widely at them; the disgruntled woman, her burly partner, the merry guys 'n gals behind them. Everyone smiled back. Oh, good.

"If you're there, JC, you might wanna back me up," he said, keeping the smile wide, keeping it cheerful even though it was starting to hurt his face. He walked with steady steps into the crowd - "Cheers, man, hey, how ya doin'? Like the dress--" - and when they were all looking at his face and his smile, he spun and dove for the burly guy's belt.

Got the sword, too; had his hand on the intricately decorated handle and yanked at it, goddamnit, but it wasn't budging and the guy was pulling back, slapping at his hand, still not very efficiently, but Chris was pretty sure those things could fight once they got themselves collected. There was noise again, a rustle going from a whisper to a roar, hurting his ears and he yanked again, hard, and the sword slid from its sheath with a metallic whine and he struck upwards at a bad angle but it wasn't very long but very sharp and it cut into the guy's chin just as he was raising his fist to strike for real. He screamed, that same insect-screech again and Chris screamed, too, through the roar of the crowd.

Hands on his shoulders and he spun and almost struck before he recognised JC.

He didn't hear his voice, he thought, not with his ears, anyway, but he knew somehow what JC said.

"Let's go get them."

Chris held the sword in both hands and felt like he was going to war.


	14. there was blood

He started thinking Joey and Lance were on wheels, rolling backwards as he slashed his way forward. He saw glimpses of them between grotesque masks and painted grins, but they didn't seem to notice him and they weren't helping. It wasn't hard to kill the creatures. They screeched and bled and fell down. He looked at the glass-eyed corpse of a voluptuous young woman in a diaphanous dress and wondered why he killed her. Then he raised his bloodstained sword and struck again.

They didn't try to run and they didn't seem to be attacking. They just stood there like a living wall between him and. And.

A living wall between him and.

"JC?" he said into the din. His voice was sucked up and tossed around by all the other sounds.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and flinched, but he knew it. "What are we doing?" he said.

Another hand on his waist, lips, breath on his ear and JC's voice: "Focus."

He shivered and felt hot and wanted to turn around, but JC was already gone.

He looked around and saw only more and more faces, more and more of them in rows, tides of them.

"There weren't this many of you before," he said. He lifted his arm with the sword and it trembled with exhaustion. Sweat was trickling in sluggish streams down his back. It was getting hard to breathe again.

One of them, a short man in a silver-shiny waistcoat, leaned forward and said, "You're wasting your time."

Chris cut him down.

 

He saw a glimpse of shimmering white in the crowd and it tugged on something in him, gave a good pull and he faltered and stared, scanned the rows for something.

"Fuck, we're stuck in some kind of glamour again," JC said next to him.

Chris turned to him but he wanted to go back to looking for. Looking for.

"Maybe we should go to plan B," JC said. He was breathing heavily and his face was sweaty under the blood. The shirt clung wetly to his body, and it wasn't white anymore, anywhere.

"You have a plan B?"

"I don't think this is happening," JC said. "They keep- There are so many more of them now. All this. It's like. Maybe they're not really there."

Chris looked at JC's bloody face, reached out and touched him, smeared the blood around, over his mouth, over his forehead.

"So this is just me hallucinating, then?" he asked.

JC licked his lips, licked at the blood and made a face. "They're good. They're good at this. It's what they DO."

"But--"

"We're wasting our time."

"Is there even time here?"

JC just looked at him, a hint of exasperation in his red-rimmed eyes. Chris looked around. This passive, dumb resistance was getting on his nerves. It seemed so unnatural.

But on the floor.

There was blood. But no bodies.

"The bodies--" he started, but when he looked up, JC was pulling off his sodden shirt and Chris' words dried in his mouth. He wondered how he could feel-- in this fucked up situation, how he could still feel the desire to grab JC and push him down on the floor and kick his legs apart and just--

"Here, if we cover our eyes, we could." He stopped. "If we don't see them, we can't."

"You're nuts," Chris said.

"I'm not the stupid fuck who got us into this," JC said and ripped a strip off the hem. "Stand still."

"Hey--"

"Stand still."

The rag smelled of blood and felt sticky and unpleasant on his eyes. "What's the point of this?"

Blind, he could hear more, like his ears immediately went into hyper mode. He heard.

He heard.

The rip of fabric.

JC's quick, shallow breaths.

His own heart beating.

What sounded like.

Like wind howling in an empty building.

"JC--" he said. "Dude, what."

JC was there, right next to him, hot and damp under his hands, slick skin and, and, more slick skin. "They're gone," he whispered, hot breath in Chris' ear. "They're not there anymore."

"How?" he asked, "how did--"

JC shut him up with a kiss, open-mouthed and lewd, and Chris' body reacted like it was conditioned; his hands rose and found JC's dirty-wet hair, his hips pushed forward.

JC bit down on his lower lip. Hard.

"Do you remember what you did?" he asked, his hands hard and unforgiving on Chris' shoulders. Chris almost said, "what?" before he realised that he knew.

"No," he said.

"Liar," JC whispered and his hands slid up Chris' shoulders to his throat.

Quickly, quickly, like he was afraid - was he afraid of JC? Afraid of JC? Hell, yeah - he said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't know what it would do. I just wanted--"

"Liar," JC said and kissed his throat, licked the angle of his jaw.

"Yeah, sure, good that you-- We could maybe talk about this later--"

Chris heard it clearly, and JC must have, too, because he stiffened and raised his head.

It was a soft little sound, half-gasp, half-cry.

"What was--" Chris started, but JC clapped a hand over his mouth.

There it was again. Maybe a whimper, a wet, breathy whimper. The last sound of a dying animal.

"Don't take off your blindfold," JC whispered. "It's a trick."

There was silence again. They were still, JC held Chris like a vice, and they were perfectly still. In the stillness, Chris' brain seemed to take a few tottering baby steps and he thought of things he hadn't thought of in a while. He tried to speak, but got nothing but the taste of blood on JC's hand.

He bit and got a breath and, "Lance, Joey, where are they? And."

There was still a white spot there. Lance, Joey and.

He struggled. It was hard, his limbs were leaden and JC was so strong, so strong and wouldn't let go.

He tore loose and JC screamed at him, "Don't take it OFF!"

But he did, and saw JC press his hands to his cloth-covered eyes, hard. Then Chris turned around.

The feeling was pretty similar to the one he got after a good amusement park ride - stepping off it, the world kept on spinning in mad circles around his head. The sensation of speed while standing still.

Everything was plain, grey concrete, plain, grey concrete walls and a plain, grey concrete ceiling. A plain grey concrete floor, apart from a spreading pool of dark, dark red. It was spreading towards him and he took a step backwards.

Behind him, JC was muttering under his breath, quick, rushed sentences. Chris didn't even try to make out the words. He took another step backwards.

There was no sign of the crowd. The blood on the floor was darker than the bright party blood they were covered in.

His eyes kept skidding over the spot. He knew. Of course he knew, but not yet. Couldn't bring himself to look. Yet.

Joey and Lance sat on the floor, holding hands like lost children.

Chris noticed he was biting his lip and tried to stop.

The air looked thick with scattered light. He wondered if this was real, or if the street and the light and everything were figments of their imaginations, too. He didn't know what he'd done. He didn't know jack about spells. He didn't even believe in this. Not really.

While his eyes kept sliding over the one spot in the big, echoing hall he needed to look at, he thought, _if you die in your dreams, you really die. What if you die in somebody else's dream? _

That brought the next question, which was, _whose dream is this, anyway?_


	15. maybe you did it

Instead of doing what he probably should do, he turned around, back to JC. JC had dropped his hands from his face. The bloody rag he'd had over his eyes lay on the floor in front of his eyes like a dead slug.

"Are you okay?" Chris said. His voice hurt his throat but sounded soft and whispery coming out, not raw and harsh like it should.

JC stared at him with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes and didn't say anything.

"You think Joey and Lance are okay?" Chris said. "Do you think--"

"SHUT UP!" JC hissed. "Are you crazy?"

Yeah, Chris thought. JC looked cold. "Are you cold? Put the shirt back on."

"I'm not COLD!" JC said. His voice wasn't soft; it sounded like a growl.

"Oh, good," Chris said. He shifted weight from one foot to the other. Behind him, nothing was happening. Maybe there was nothing there. Just darkness, or maybe a bottomless pit of hell. Or a green field with scattered poppies or tulips or some other harmless and beautiful and useless flower. Hell, maybe a host of angels about to burst into joyous declarations of the grooviness, greatness and all-round good-guy-ness of God. That would be cool.

Justin had worn wings before, he remembered even though he had no desire to remember anything about Justin. Fluttery, sparkly, diaphanous wings made of cobwebs or silk strands.

He turned around. The wings were just clothes, he saw. They were spread around him, black with the blood. There was more blood than boy. There was more blood than anything.

"JC," he said. "JC, are you okay?" He didn't know why he kept asking. Stupid to ask. It wasn't JC who had all his blood on the outside. All his blood and.

"Goddamn," he muttered and turned away, back to JC. "We have to."

JC didn't move. Chris wasn't sure if he was staring at. That. Or something else, something only visible to JC.

"I don't think it's real," he said. Who the hell was he trying to convince? "It's not real. We can fix him."

JC blinked slowly, owlishly.

Chris had his back turned and it felt unreal, definitely unreal. That shit couldn't be real. He took a few steps and caught JC, hugged his unresisting body and stroked his dirty hair. Oh, JC was real. A little chilly, but alive. Chris put his hand on JC's chest, and felt his heart beat fluttery, nervous beats under the tight, damp skin.

"Come on," he said and tugged JC along. A wide detour around the still-spreading pool, and into the fuzzy shadowy spot where Joey and Lance sat.

"Hey, guys."

"Hey," Joey said in the wavery voice of a little boy lost.

"Hmmm," Lance said, distractedly. He had let go of Joey and was hugging himself. His eyes were distant and unfocused.

Time to do something. Anything. Anything at all, before everyone just sat down and zoned out forever and ever to eternity, amen. Before they all died of sadness.

I didn't just think that, he thought.

"Okay," he said, making his voice loud and strong. "This is not constructive."

"Don't see you being constructive," Lance said gently without looking at him. Behind Chris, JC moved restlessly.

Ignore, ignore, ignore. "I think something is yanking our chains here. This is just so much bullshit. Loops and freaky horror nightmares and every cliché in the book."

"They cut him up," JC whispered in his ear. "We were fucking around, we didn't know what we were doing, and who knows. Maybe I killed him. Maybe you did. Maybe you stuck your sword through his stomach and twisted until everything just fell out. Maybe you did it. Maybe you did it, maybe you did it, maybe--"

Ignore only went so far. Chris twisted around and slapped JC in the face. No punching. Just a friendly slap to get him back down from whatever insane trip he was out cruising. A friendly slap and a hand over his mouth.

Maybe I did kill him.

That didn't really sink in. He looked past JC, looked at Justin for real this time. He lay still and pale in the pool of crimson. He didn't look like he was sleeping. He looked like an animal carcass with a human face.

Chris hadn't eaten in a long time, and it was actually a little annoying. Throwing up would be a good distraction. Hello, content of stomach. Good to know it's there, because that would mean the stomach was still there and not lying like an abandoned shopping bag three feet from his body.

Oh, God.

Anything, people. Anything.

Anything. He let JC go and looked down at the floor, his bare feet and filthy pants. His hands. His palms were grimy with drying blood and the wound Lance cut in it looked like it might be infected. It itched, a deep, nagging itch that he couldn't scratch because he couldn't touch that mess of jagged edges and torn flesh.

His eyes wandered without asking him, and he saw Justin's hand, palm up on the floor, his long fingers slightly curled. The wound was there, a bloodless gash, a little blue-tinted. All of him was blue-tinted. His eyes were wide open, but unfocused. That was really what gave the game away. Not the hollow ruin that was his chest; just the fact that his eyes looked in different directions.

Shuffling and movement behind him, and Lance's voice: "We need to find someone."

"Yeah," Chris said.

"How did you make them go away?"

"They weren't really there. We just realised that and they disappeared."

"How did-- How did that happen, then?" Just the mention and he realised he'd been staring at Justin's face. The horrible eyes and the blue lips. He thought, _I've seen this in my nightmares. _

"I think I did it," he said. His arms remembered cutting into things over and over. Flesh and bone and blood that wasn't real. How would he know the difference if at one time, it was real?


	16. bitter the disappointment

It felt new to have an idea, one so clear and pretty, but there it was. "Lance," he said. "We need to get back."

"Where?" Lance said.

"To the party."

There was a silence, and then Lance's hand fumbled for his. "You think that'll help?"

JC hadn't moved; only to slump against his shoulder. He was shivering. Chris shoved at him with his free hand and he stumbled back.

Lance said, "Okay. We can probably just do what we did before. I guess." He lifted their clasped hands and opened his. The wound was almost closed.

"How are we. Look--" JC said and lifted his head, slowly, like it weighed more than he could really bear. "Last time you just forgot everything. What if it happens again?"

Lance blinked and glanced over them, and everyone's eyes followed helplessly. Chris had read a lot of horror novels, and they always claimed the corpses' eyes stared 'accusingly'. Justin's eyes were just dead and not asking for anything.

"It won't," he said. "We'll stick together." It sounded stupid. They'd stuck together so well in the past, hadn't they?

"Okay," JC said. The fight had been leached out of him and he just looked cold and tired and numb and naked, like a survivor after a flood.

Chris looked around for his shirt, but it was gone. That was no surprise. "Hey, Joey, shirt."

"Gotcha."

Joey's shirt seemed to be made of an entire bearskin, and JC looked fragile and childlike inside it.

 

Lance cut deeper this time; scratched bone, Chris thought. His hand wouldn't close around the wound. The blood welled up through the dirt like a fresh spring in a marsh. Chris could have stared at it for hours.

JC didn't protest when he took his hand.

"This won't hurt a bit," Chris said and cut. JC shivered and bit his lip, but didn't say a word.

Joey held out his hand in silence. Already, he seemed larger and hairier. Chris looked up and saw that Lance's eyes were glowing, glass-bright. "It's working," he said.

"It is," JC said. The skin on his face was exquisitely pale now, the dirt just fading smudges. Chris squinted and thought he saw a nimbus of light surround him. It was working, all right. He could hear music somewhere, light flurries of chords, voices, laughter.

"Wait, wait, wait--" he said, spun around. There were colours coming together in the air, gaining form. "We have to--"

JC was quicker, light on his feet. He slipped in the blood on the floor - still concrete, but changing already - skidded and fell to his knees.

There was no time to be squeamish, and Chris had lost his desire to lose his lunch. He joined JC, dropped to his knees. The blood, cooling already, soaked into his pants. The concrete was cold.

There was a silence, the room holding its breath.

"What do we--?" Joey mumbled next to him, but Lance hushed him. JC moved nervously. Chris' knees ached from the cold. His hands ached; even the right one, and he realised he was holding Lance's Leatherman in a white-knuckled death grip.

Places like this, he thought. You work on gut instinct.

He put his left hand on Justin's limp right hand, the one with the cut. It was cold; not as cold as the floor but getting there. His eyes hurt, that kind of prickling under the eyelids that wanted to become tears, but there was no time for big emotional scenes here. The silence was taking on a breathless, anticipating quality.

He straightened out Justin's fingers and pressed the hand flat against the floor. Gut instinct, okay. He lifted the knife.

He stabbed, and somehow he must have expected Justin to jump and scream at him; instead, all he heard was JC letting out a soft, pained whimper and Chris was surprised at how bitter the disappointment was.

He left the knife in the wound. There was no blood other than his own, spattered over Justin's fishbelly-white palm and underarm.

The silence was over and the music flooded in. It tugged at him, playfully, gently, soothingly. He heard laughter and it all came together like it'd never left; magnificent dresses and beautiful faces and all in a swirl of tempting, tempting colour.

Pain in his hand, and he saw JC clutching it tightly, and Lance took his other hand and he saw Joey cling to Lance's other hand. He looked down at Justin and reality - whatever that was - bounced back and clocked him in the face.

He squeezed their hands and closed his eyes.

*

_Just voices. The familiar roar of a crowd screaming. A large one, from the sound of it; a stadium full. He hears the shrill squeals of the girls and the whistles and the co-ordinated racket of a section attempting to sing one of their songs. The anticipation is there, the pre-show buzz, the sweet fluttering in the pit of his stomach. He can hear them chanting names. If he pricks his ears, he can find his own name. _

"Can I just give you some advice?" someone says; just a thick whisper that makes the short hairs at the back of his neck shiver upright.

He doesn't turn around, but now he sees that he's standing behind a thick, black curtain. Someone has stuck a broad swath of painter's tape across it and written HOME on it.

He doesn't speak, but the voice goes on anyway. Like he knew it would. This isn't a voice that will be shut up.

"Everything you know is wrong. Everything you believe is wrong. You have no idea what you're doing."

He reads the text again. Broad strokes in magic marker. HOME. HOME. HOME. He thinks, fervently, If I click my heels together three times, will I be able to push the curtain aside and just go home?

"I've had quite the time watching you and your friends stumble around like blind turkeys."

He reaches out for the curtain and it's thick and heavy under his fingertips. He's looking for the edge, scrabbling over glossy fabric.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

It's there, the edge, and he pushes it aside and there's light on the other side - of course, that's not a surprise. Light and warmth, classic stuff - but before he pushes through he turns his head, and they're all there; a tableau of frozen figures - Justin lying still and pale on the floor, JC kneeling by his head, Lance's hand on JC's shoulder, Joey's arm around Lance's waist. They're not looking at Chris, like they've already given up on him.

The sunlight - because it is sunlight, lovely, warm Florida sunlight - heats the side of his face. The rest of him is freezing.

It's a trick, he thinks. This is all just a trick.

Of course it is. Disembodied voices, nightmares; bullshit, all of it.

"Fuck you," he says and lets the curtain fall back.

*

"No really, fuck YOU," he said again, and JC stared at him. "Not you."

He turned around. There was still music in the background, but the room was still bare concrete. There was a shadow in a corner, though, one that couldn't really be accounted for.

"Him," he said and pointed. JC didn't let go of his hand when he did, so they both pointed together.

"Who?" Lance said and looked, too. "Oh."


	17. little warriors

"Let us out," he said loudly.

"Let us out," JC echoed, in the place of the real echo, which didn't work in this place.

The silence in the dark corner took on a snickering quality. Mocking came in thick waves. Chris shook JC's hand loose and flipped the bird.

A little pause. Then, "Would you say you're at a slight disadvantage?"

They stared at the shadow. It moved a little, and Chris saw Joey flinch in the corner of his eye.

"Who are you and what do you want?" JC asked. He'd stopped looking insane for a moment and stood tall and straight instead. Chris felt a pinch of pride before he remembered that he didn't have the right to take credit for anything.

Contemptuous silence in the corner, cold and dead silence behind them.

"Would you like me to tell you which one of you two held the sword?" Not a laugh, but the shadow of a laugh, a little movement. "Little warriors. He died in friendly fire."

"NO!" they both said, Chris and JC with one voice, and the same quiver of fear in it.

"That's all right, then. You can go home now."

Silence again, neutral this time. They waited breathlessly. Chris thought, it likes to toy with us, that's what it's doing.

"Really?" Joey said.

"How?" Lance said.

"What about--" JC whispered and Chris picked it up.

"--Justin?"

"My friends, take your boy and walk. He's just feeling a little under the weather." The silence behind them became a gasp, a cough, a deep rattle, finally retching; they spun around and Justin was on all fours, clawing at the concrete and vomiting reeking, rotten blood.

They descended on him and Chris thought of ER staff, vultures, reporters and felt his head spin, light and floaty with relief and the heaviness in his stomach to counterweight is.

He looked around, desperately, and met JC's eyes; the same division there.

He almost said, "you're not angry anymore," but that wouldn't be fair. JC was distracted. He'd remember that it was all Chris' fault sooner or later.

He put his hand on Justin's trembling shoulder and tried again to remember if he'd felt anything; if he'd looked into Justin's eyes and maybe recognised them for a fraction of a second before he swung. Nothing there. Maybe it was JC. Guilty again because he wished that pain on JC.

Justin had stopped puking, but he was breathing in short, shallow gasps, still scratching his fingers bloody on the rough floor. Chris took one of his hands and yanked it up, touched the blood. Lance's Leatherman lay on the floor two feet from Justin's other hand. The wound was bleeding again.

"I'm okay," Justin said, his voice a little bubbly and throaty, but clear, loud enough, real. "I'm okay. I'm okay."

Maybe he was trying to convince himself. He shuddered and pushed himself up. There was a raw, angry-red scar zigzagging down his chest. He looked down on himself and Chris almost had to look away. Almost, but he didn't, and saw Justin trail his bleeding hand over the scar, painting it with more red.

In the corner, there was a small sigh. "It's not my best job, I'm afraid."

Jerks and starts all around; they'd actually forgotten about it.

"A little shoddy. There was a lot to fix. You did him in good, boys."

"What's that?" Justin said. He was struggling to his feet, pale and shaky but alive, blinking in the hazy light and panting a little. Chris held his elbow and let him lean on him. His skin was warming up a little. He was the most beautiful thing Chris could remember ever seeing.

He remembered other times, though. Justin had always been mythically gorgeous, one of those people who walk untouched through the world. There'd been no reason not to love him, but no excuse to have him.

"Do you--?" JC started, broke off, squirmed, tried again. "Does it hurt?"

"Not really," Justin said.

And JC; it was just once. Chris had been a little drunk. That was an excuse, of course; three beers wouldn't make him lose control, but it did make him feel a little better. I was drunk. I didn't mean it. JC would appreciate it, no doubt. I was drunk when I pushed you against the wall and made you help me forget.

Three beers was definitely the skimpiest excuse since the Devil made me do it.

"I tried to make it better," he muttered, under his breath. Justin had dropped his head onto his shoulder. "I fucked up."

There was laughter in the corner, hearty laughter.

"You don't think you did this yourself? A three dollar spell book from Lenny's Knick Knack Emporium does not build parallel universes, Christopher."

"But--"

"I did this."

"But why?"

"Because it's fun. Because you built a pretty dead city in your head and then you went there, and I realised the dream. How about that?"

He tried to remember building cities in his head and came up short. "Liar," he said, but he might have been talking to himself.

"Well, yes. But it was fun, though. Wasn't it?"

You could call it a lot of things, but fun wasn't one of them. JC was looking at the floor, his fingers curled tight around Justin's wrist. Joey and Lance had gravitated together again, the way they did.

He thought he saw the shadow smile.

"As I said, I'm done with you. You can go."

No one moved. Everyone narrowed their eyes suspiciously.

Lance cleared his throat. "What are the conditions?"

"Oh, you want a contract? Business-minded, this one."

"There's always a price," Lance muttered and looked down, but his mouth was set in a stubborn line. Chris wanted to hit him for bringing up conditions, but maybe it would have been more dangerous to ignore that. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

"Very astute. Yes, that's true. My services come with a fee." Pause. "You have nothing, not even the clothes on your backs."

Pause. Justin sighed, a warm blast of air on Chris' sweaty neck.

"I kinda liked this one--" A cold draft blew between them and Justin wasn't pressed against Chris anymore. "--and you don't really need him."

Justin was in the corner, only a pale face in a blot of darkness.

"No," Chris said.

"You can vote."

They exchanged glances. Chris thought, him or me. Him or me, and his brain worked so fast he couldn't keep track of all the thoughts, but the first clear one was, I want out of here.

"One vote!"

Everybody flinched and Joey rubbed his hands over his face.

"Two!"

"Hang on--" Lance tried.

"Three!"

They stood frozen.

"Four. One against. Nice to know someone loves you, chickie." In the darkness, Justin bared his teeth.

JC was staring at Chris. Chris knew who'd voted against. Oh, JC was too good for them all, wasn't he?

_"You build a pretty dead city in your head and then you go there." _

He hadn't been too drunk to remember every touch and every sigh and every time JC smiled at him.

_"You build a pretty dead city in your head and then you go there." _

"Take me instead," JC said raggedly.

"Thank you, but no thank you."

"This is my place," Chris said, surprising even himself. "Who the fuck are you? This is my place. Give him BACK."

Laughter.

"I am you," it said, but it was mocking.

"No," Chris said.

Justin spun around in the corner and the darkness tightened and had form.

"No," Chris said.

Fireworks. The end of days.

_"You build a pretty dead city in your head and then you go there."_


	18. a pretty dead city

He didn't expect to wake up in a hospital. Really, what he expected was to wake up in his own bed, with Busta hogging the pillow. Roll over, groan, "Never again. Never mixing liquors again," and that would be it. Puke a couple times, take a shower and feel the nightmare slither back into whatever dark crevice of the soul it came from.

Instead he blinked and blinked and the room was still sterile white and he ached everywhere, like every bone in his body was made of ground glass.

"Oh, fuck," he muttered.

Well, okay. Hospital was doable, too. They gave you drugs. "Thank GOD, it was just a dream," he said out loud.

There was a little sigh next to him. A sigh, a gasp, a muffled sob.

"JC?" he said. It was cold in the room; just a little too cold. He couldn't move his left arm. It was tied to the bed. "JC?"

"I'm sorry," JC whispered. Chris turned his head. JC sat on a chair by the bedside. His face was in shadow; darkness clustered around his eyes like bruises. Chris kept from flinching somehow. No, he thought.

"What?" Chris said. The dream was fading already, just as expected. He suddenly wanted back there. He'd known it was a dream all along, of course he had. Ha ha ha, scary ass dream.

"I'm sorry," JC said again, "I was waiting for you to wake up. Everyone else is. They're not. I just wanted to tell you--"

"WHAT?" All he remembered were scraps of nightmare. What else had happened?

JC rubbed his eyes, turned his head and Chris saw that the shadows were real bruises, merry purple, blue, red, green, yellow. He had a cut on his lip and one of his hands was wrapped in gauze.

"It wasn't your fault," he said, and Chris knew that it was his fault, very much his fault. It was hard to read JC's eyes when they were puffy and bruised, but his voice was brittle.

He bit the inside of his cheek. It hurt more than it should have, and he realised there were stitches in his mouth.

"They took him off life support," JC said, blurted it out like it hurt to hold it in. "Two hours ago."

Chris wanted to say, "what?" again, but he didn't want to know. He couldn't remember anything, just the fucked up dream, just that it was his fault.

JC stood up and came closer.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes," Chris said. JC bent over him and kissed him on the cheek, a little gingerly. Chris grabbed his hand, the gauzed one. JC let him. Chris struggled against the restraint, but in the end, the right hand was enough and he tore off the gauze.

JC met his eyes.

Chris' hand hurt, too. When he flexed his fingers, he felt the edges of the wound in his palm.

"It wasn't your fault," JC said. "I love you. I'm gonna go. Um. They."

"Go," Chris said.

When JC was gone, he whispered, "I love you too," to the empty room just to know what it felt like.

JC had always been a bad liar.

When he took his time to figure it out, he managed to get the cuff opened and his hand freed. Pulling out the IV needle was a minor pain in the midst of all the other pains.

It was dark outside. The room had a balcony.

_"You build a pretty dead city in your head and then you go there." _

His legs were weak, but he could support himself. He couldn't remember. He thought he was actively not remembering.

"I love you too," he said again, but he didn't remember, so it meant nothing.

He shook his hand and the wound opened. Small drops of blood smattered over white and white and more white.

He opened the balcony door, and the air outside was perfectly still, heavy and thick with hazy light.


End file.
